Showing papers in "Australian Historical Studies in 2006"
47 citations
TL;DR: For example, the authors examined the significance of the decisions of Justice Henry Bournes Higgins as President of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Court (1907-21), and his marginalisation of women in the paid workforce.
Abstract: Historians have long debated the significance of the decisions of Justice Henry Bournes Higgins as President of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Court (1907–21), and his marginalisation of women in the paid workforce. Higgins’ motivations have been less thoroughly explored. Gender demarcation clarified the role of the working class in nation‐building. Women were relegated, as much as possible, to the domestic sphere, to fulfil their motherhood role on behalf of the nation and clear the way for the establishment of the disciplined workplace functions of the male breadwinner. The verdicts and transcripts of Higgins’ decisions reflect the complex exchange between the liberal architect and the governed as he regulated state‐sponsored freedom to bargain and organise—albeit in the name of law and order. On behalf of the development of the young Commonwealth Higgins regulated working‐class manhood by suppressing industrial militancy, upholding managerial prerogative—the right of management to rule t...
25 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined how the remaking of Australian history in the last quarter of the twentieth century has affected the subjectivities and social relations of people who do not make history but who must don new truths about their own past.
Abstract: This essay asks how the remaking of Australian history in the last quarter of the twentieth century has affected the subjectivities and social relations of people who do not make history but who must don new truths about their own past. Aboriginal people, as well as Anglo‐Australians, had to shift their consciousness as the new topic, ambiguously called ‘Aboriginal history’, burgeoned within Australian historiography. Of most significance to me is how changing judgements of the past are altering the relationships between these peoples. While the new history is seen as creating a moral challenge or burden to the nation, it is also assumed to reveal something of Aboriginal experience as colonial subjects. But historians have paid little attention to how changing social conditions have affected Aboriginal societies and the sense of self‐—and one changing social condition is the new history itself.
22 citations
TL;DR: The swimming racing stroke, the crawl, or freestyle as it is known in contemporary parlance, was invented by a Solomon Island schoolboy named Alick Wickham as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Australia and, more specifically, a Solomon Island schoolboy named Alick Wickham, are credited with creating the swimming racing stroke, the crawl, or freestyle as it is known in contemporary parlance. Wickham's contribution constitutes a popular, celebrated and enduring legend. While there is some factual basis to the legend, Wickham's contribution is a sport creation myth. The myth offers an example of the intersection of sport and constructions of Pacific islanders in the racial discourse of the Federation period. As a cultural discourse, the myth reflects how Wickham was accommodated as an exoticised islander and socially acceptable ‘black’ sportsman.
15 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that Australia's explorers were also crucially engaged in acoustic journeys, and that the encounter with the aural landscape fundamentally affected the explorer's response to environments and peoples, with consequences for colonialism's physical and imaginative appropriations.
Abstract: Until recently, aural history received scant attention from historians. The exploration of Australia, conventionally understood as an overwhelmingly visual experience, exemplifies this oversight. This paper argues that Australia's explorers were also crucially engaged in acoustic journeys. Auditory assumptions formed part of the explorers’ cultural baggage, and in important ways sound sustained expeditions. Simultaneously, the encounter with the aural landscape fundamentally affected the explorer's response to environments and peoples, with consequences for colonialism's physical and imaginative appropriations. The legacy of this listening would long remain in acoustic conceptualisations of Australia, especially in relation to the apprehension of silence.
15 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines two phenomena of 1930s Victoria: the desire for Aboriginal culture to appear in popular exhibits and centennial celebrations, and visits by members of the public to Lake Tyers Aboriginal Station to view Aboriginal performers and purchase Aboriginal material culture.
Abstract: This article examines two phenomena of 1930s Victoria: the desire for Aboriginal culture to appear in popular exhibits and centennial celebrations, and visits by members of the public to Lake Tyers Aboriginal Station to view Aboriginal performers and purchase Aboriginal material culture While different, they are nonetheless connected by a desire to witness the Aborigine as primitive spectacle They demonstrate that popular interest in Indigenous culture was far more prevalent than has been previously acknowledged The modernist preoccupation with primitivism, far from being an elitist, intellectual pursuit, was occurring at a very popular level However, these ideas, while often more sympathetic to Indigenous culture and heritage, still viewed Aboriginal Australians as Other
13 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors attempt to recover employer and employee narratives that helped shape this pivotal event whose legacy cast a long shadow over the lives of Queensland mining families, including the government's action in placing responsibility for dust suppression on tributers and contractors and the reluctance of mining unions to alienate the latter groups by making silicosis an industrial issue.
Abstract: In 1909–10 the Queensland Parliamentary Labor Party was rebuilding its strength from the Opposition benches after a damaging split with its former leader, William Kidston, who continued as premier in alliance with more conservative politicians. Reflecting the concerns of hard‐rock miners, the party campaigned to ameliorate the occupational disease silicosis (miners’ phthisis). In December 1910 a Royal Commission was appointed to enquire into this ‘evil’. This opportunity was squandered by the commission's conservative findings, the government's action in placing responsibility for dust suppression on tributers and contractors and the reluctance of mining unions to alienate the latter groups by making silicosis an industrial issue. This article attempts to recover employer and employee narratives that helped shape this pivotal event whose legacy cast a long shadow over the lives of Queensland mining families.
12 citations
TL;DR: The authors locates Sister McNaughton's diary within the genre of travel writing, views the voyage through its lens, and considers her performances within its pages, including ideals of femininity and aspects of the Anzac legend.
Abstract: Travel and war have been defining areas of masculinity in the West. Their narration has also, in the past, been largely a male preserve. In 1915 Australian army nurse Sister Kit McNaughton stepped out of place and onto a troopship bound for Egypt. On her first day, she began a diary, which she would continue through four years of war. This article locates Sister McNaughton's diary within the genre of travel writing, views the voyage through its lens, and considers her performances within its pages. In her diary, with her audience at home in mind, Sister McNaughton negotiated her unconventional position and re‐imagined herself in response to her new experiences. In doing so she drew upon the discourses available to her, including ideals of femininity and, unexpectedly, aspects of the Anzac legend. Sister McNaughton's use of the Anzac legend adds complexity to our understanding of the resonance and value of the legend in its earliest incarnation.
11 citations
TL;DR: The women's peace movement has a long history in Australia and groups of women have protested since at least World War I as mentioned in this paper, and women have participated in the Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament and Sound Women's Peace Camp.
Abstract: The women's peace movement has a long history in Australia and groups of women have protested since at least World War I. In this paper I discuss the women's peace movement of the mid 1980s and, in particular, the activities of the Western Australian group, Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament, and the Sound Women's Peace Camp held south of Perth in 1984. Radical feminism informed the women's peace movement and was expressed through protests not only against war, but also against other forms of what were considered to be patriarchal violence.
11 citations
Journal Article•
10 citations
TL;DR: The authors propose that history films be understood in terms of spectatorship rather than historical representation, drawing on concepts of shock, recognition, and nachtraglichkeit, they approach lost child and black tracker films as deferred revisions that invite the viewer to perform a cinematic kind of backtracking.
Abstract: This essay takes issue with newspaper pundits, academic film critics and historians who seek in their respective professional ways to bar ‘history’ films from counting as ‘good cinema’ or who decry cinema's capacity for doing ‘real history’. Paying particular attention to the reappearance of the figures of the lost child and the black tracker in recent Australian cinema, we propose that history films be understood in terms of spectatorship rather than historical representation. Drawing on concepts of shock, recognition and nachtraglichkeit, we approach lost child and black tracker films as deferred revisions that invite the viewer to perform a cinematic kind of backtracking—that is, going over old ground in ways that may lead one to retract or reverse one's opinion.
TL;DR: There was some tension between Catholics and communists in New Zealand trade unions, but no full-scale confrontation of the sort that occurred in Australia as mentioned in this paper, because demographics ruled it out.
Abstract: In mid twentieth‐century New Zealand, the Catholic Church and the Communist Party both saw themselves as representing working‐class interests and both, at different times, sought influence within the New Zealand Labour Party. Their attitude towards each other was mutual hostility. However, in both the Catholic and the communist press, the primary frame of reference was the international situation rather than the local scene, although international matters occasionally had local repercussions. Catholic anti‐communism was in tune with the general attitude of the country during the Cold War, but died away in the 1960s. There was some tension between Catholics and communists in New Zealand trade unions, but no full‐scale confrontation of the sort that occurred in Australia. Simple demographics ruled it out.
TL;DR: In his recently published book, The White Australia Policy, Keith Windschuttle as discussed by the authors asserted that academic historians have sought to make Australia appear a much more racist society than the historical record would suggest.
Abstract: In his recently published book, The White Australia Policy, Keith Windschuttle accuses academic historians of errors of fact and judgement in their accounts of white Australia. This unarticle examines these claims of exaggeration and distortion with particular reference to the nature and meaning of race, racism and representations of Asia in Australian history. The article rejects Winschuttle's sweeping claim that academic historians have sought to make Australia appear a much more racist society than the historical record would suggest.
TL;DR: This article focused on highly educated women who confronted head on the contradictions of the period and crafted a new form of citizenship, one which combined a sense of individuality with the tasks of contributing to the nation through both family and work.
Abstract: History has begun to reclaim the 1950s from its original designation as dull, dreary and conformist, the high point of the suburban dream. Women are frequently deemed to have contributed little to the task of developing citizenship or the newer self required for postwar modernity. This essay focuses on highly educated women who confronted head on the contradictions of the period. Taught by the emerging disciplines of psychology and sociology that their family role was crucial, they were also urged to join the growing workforce, to avoid becoming a ‘wasted resource’, and to express their real selves. Many crafted a new form of citizenship, one which combined a sense of individuality with the tasks of contributing to the nation through both family and work.
TL;DR: The authors examines and discusses the work of Australian anthropologists in World War II and how their work contributed to the changes is less well known, while the institutional consequences of the war are relatively well known.
Abstract: World War II had unexpected consequences for the development of anthropology in Australia; it led to a breaking of the hegemonic control exercised by the Sydney department by the creation of, first, the Australian School of Pacific Administration (ASOPA) and second, the establishment of the Australian National University (ANU). Both institutions affected the way anthropology was practised and theorised, as well as removing the training of colonial field officers to the ASOPA, the original raison d'etre for the Sydney department. While the institutional consequences of the war are relatively well known, the work of anthropologists during the war and how their work contributed to the changes is less well known. This paper examines and discusses the work of Australian anthropologists in World War II.
TL;DR: The Le Souef box as mentioned in this paper is a decorated chest containing a set of miniaturized Aboriginal weapons, made by Albert and Caroline Leouef a decade after the frontier period in the colonial state of Victoria, Australia.
Abstract: The Le Souef box, a decorated chest containing a set of miniaturised Aboriginal weapons, was made by Albert and Caroline Le Souef a decade after the frontier period in the colonial state of Victoria, Australia. Invested with many key concerns of the nineteenth century's apprehension and representation of Australian Aboriginal peoples, this complex composite object of images, text and diminutive objects is animated by many cultural and scientific narratives of the era, including ethnography, typology, museology, miniaturisation and the fetishisation of indigenous weaponry. The Le Souef box is a transitional object, reflecting the shifting colonial ideologies of the 1860s and the gradual move from ethnology to the harder and more formalised racial sciences. Yet the box also reveals the personal and psychological desires of it makers, showing a genuine interest in Aboriginal people as well as an imperial nostalgia for an untainted past and an idealised pre‐contact Aboriginal life. This paper seeks to bring a...
TL;DR: The authors explored the Australasian branch network of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuo Min Tang or KMT) and drew connections between the institutional history of the KMT and personal observations on what it may have meant to be Chinese Australian in China and Australia over the first half of the twentieth century.
Abstract: Chinese communities maintained a variety of institutional networks linking Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands and southern China over the first half of the twentieth century. This paper explores one of these networks, the Australasian branch network of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuo Min Tang or KMT). By focusing on two institutional initiatives of the Australasian Kuo Min Tang—one in China and one in Australia—the paper asks whether there was anything distinctively Australasian about Chinese‐Australasian networks besides their location in the South Pacific. Reflecting on the life of a contemporary Chinese‐Australian journalist, the paper draws connections between the institutional history of the KMT and personal observations on what it may have meant to be Chinese Australian in China and Australia over the first half of the twentieth century.
TL;DR: The New Zealand responses to William Holman Hunt's painting The Light of the World in 1906 during its visit as part of a tour through the British Empire was considered primarily with reference to its religious dimension, and provided a window into religion in New Zealand at the beginning of the twentieth century as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: This article considers New Zealand responses to William Holman Hunt's painting The Light of the World in 1906 during its visit as part of a tour through the British Empire. Following similar success in Australia, the New Zealand tour was phenomenally popular. The tour is considered primarily with reference to its religious dimension, and provides a window into religion in New Zealand at the beginning of the twentieth century. In particular, it illustrates the pervasive but often veiled nature of Protestant religiosity.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on images of women who worked in government offices and explore the ways in which age, along with gender and class, became institutionalised as a marker of difference among them in the early twentieth century.
Abstract: This paper focuses on images of women who worked in government offices and explores the ways in which age, along with gender and class, became institutionalised as a marker of difference among them in the early twentieth century. It argues that the girl typist was etched sharply in the public imagination and, although there were anxieties about her youth and femininity, by the 1930s the more ambiguous image of the middle‐aged single ‘lady officer’ constituted the greater threat to patriarchy.
Journal Article•
TL;DR: In the late nineteenth century Australian writers were frequently part of a core group of advocates of an Australian cultural nationalism but they faced a particular problem. British publishers were dominant in book sales in Australia and could be unsympathetic to their aspirations as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In the late nineteenth century Australian writers were frequently part of a core group of advocates of an Australian cultural nationalism but they faced a particular problem. British publishers were dominant in book sales in Australia and could be unsympathetic to their aspirations. The writers made attempts to break into the British market, encouraged by the rhetoric of imperial understanding but, as the case of Macmillan and Co. illustrates, support could be difficult to secure, short‐term and focused on quite different goals. Rolf Boldrewood had some success but that was owing to particular circumstances. In the first decades of the new century reliance would have to remain based on serial publication and emerging local book publishers.